Summary: The Ombudsman will not investigate this complaint that the Council removed and destroyed a gravestone. This is because the events being complained about occurred many years ago, and the Ombudsman is unlikely to be able to uncover evidence to establish whether the Council acted with fault.

The complaint

1. The complainant, whom I refer to as Ms X, says the Council is responsible for removing and destroying her father’s gravestone after his remains were exhumed in 2000.
2. Ms X wanted to re-use the headstone when her sister subsequently passed away in 2018, so thinks the Council should pay the cost of purchasing a new one.

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The Ombudsman’s role and powers

3. We investigate complaints about ‘maladministration’ and ‘service failure’. In this statement, I have used the word ‘fault’ to refer to these. We must also consider whether any fault has had an adverse impact on the person making the complaint. We refer to this as ‘injustice’. We provide a free service, but must use public money carefully. We may decide not to start or continue with an investigation if we believe:

• it is unlikely we could find fault, or
• it is unlikely we could add to any previous investigation by the Council, or
• it is unlikely further investigation will lead to a different outcome.

(Local Government Act 1974, section 24A(6), as amended)

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How I considered this complaint

4. I have considered:
• Ms X’s complaint to the Ombudsman;
• Information from the Council about telephone call records.
5. I also gave Ms X the opportunity to comment on a draft version of this statement.

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What I found

Summary of what happened

6. Ms X’s father was buried in 1986, and Ms X says a headstone was erected at the grave.
7. In 2000, the father’s remains were exhumed and buried elsewhere.
8. In 2018, Ms X’s sister passed away. Ms X wanted to re-use the headstone that had been left at her father’s original place of rest, but she discovered the headstone was no longer there.
9. The Council says the Cremation (England and Wales) Regulations 2008 requires that “a cremation authority must keep the application for cremation and any certificates or other documents relating to cremation, or an electronic copy of such documents, for a period of 15 years from the date of the cremation to which they relate”. The only record on the Council’s system is that there was an ‘unknown memorial’ on the plot. It therefore accepts a headstone/memorial existed, but says it has been unable to determine the nature, or ownership, of this, and there is no evidence to indicate who removed it and when. Ms X has no photographs, and the company they purchased the headstone from no longer exists.
10. Ms X says she had a telephone conversation with a member of the cemetery team in December 2018, and was told the gravestone had been taken away and destroyed. I asked the Council if it had any records of this conversation, and it said there were none.

Assessment

11. Given the passage of time and the associated absence of records, it is unlikely that an investigation by the Ombudsman would be able to add to the Council’s previous enquiries or achieve a different outcome.

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Final decision

12. The Ombudsman will not investigate Ms X’s complaint. This is because an investigation is unlikely to be able to establish whether the Council has acted with fault, due to the absence of records so long after the events in question occurred.

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Investigator's decision on behalf of the Ombudsman